Cannon in Sir, We Have an Orc Problem: Penetration First

Last reviewed: 12 September 2026 · Newest game update reflected: 2026.08.18.12.05 (18 August 2026). The cannon carries the single largest number on this site's stat table, and it is not the damage figure. Its penetration of 31 is roughly ten times the gunner's and more than twice the tesla coil's chain count — and the all turrets page argues that penetration, not DPS, is what actually decides whether a turret earns its slot.

The numbers

These come from the player-measured stat sheet by the Steam user Mrlazy, self-dated 31 July 2026, which is the same sheet behind every turret figure on this site. Mumpitz Games has not published turret numbers, so the caveat on the all turrets page applies here too: if the game disagrees with the sheet, the game is right.

The one description that came from the game itself

The cannon is the only turret whose in-game text this site has on record. The upgrade-tree screenshot used on the upgrade grind page shows the Cannon node's own tooltip, which reads: low fire rate but high damage, projectiles penetrate through multiple orcs.

That matters more than it sounds. Every other stat on this site is a player's measurement; this one sentence is the build's own description of the turret, and it independently confirms the shape of the measured numbers — slow, heavy, and built to pass through a column rather than to strike one target.

Aim along the flow, not across it

The turret roles page gives the placement rule in one line: aim a cannon along the line orcs naturally walk rather than across it, because a cannon firing perpendicular to the flow spends most of its penetration on empty ground.

That rule only pays off if you already accept what the orc flow mechanic page establishes — orcs move like a fluid finding an overflow point, not a queue, so the place where a column is deep enough for 31 penetration to matter is at or just past a chokepoint. A cannon covering open ground in front of a bottleneck is firing into a crowd that refills faster than it can be cut, and a player called John, quoted on that page, files cannons and gunners together as the tools for "punching holes in large groupings and picking off units" rather than as area control.

Where players actually placed cannons

Across the level write-ups on this site, the cannon shows up in a specific position rather than everywhere:

• On 5.2, Sulphuric_Glue put a small gunner-plus-cannon wall behind the first lip, a full line of gunners and cannons at the second, and kept a couple of spare cannons plowing through the orcs still queued at the first chokepoint.
• Also on 5.2, jeffk114's laser-based setup does not place cannons at the lip at all — his laser fence is there to force orcs to trickle around the corners into cannon and gunner fire waiting behind it.
• On 5.1, the harder-achievements guide summarised on the all achievements page notes that the bottom two cannons and machine guns could have been placed elsewhere, because so few enemies ever reached them.

The pattern in all three is the same: cannons sit one step behind the point where the map does the throttling, catching a column that something else has already shaped. Notably, the four-turret squads documented for 4.2 contain no cannon at all — that level's chokepoints are held with a flamethrower, a laser, a gunner and a tesla coil per choke.

The level where a cannon line stops being enough

The 3.2 difficulty spike page is, read one way, a page about the cannon's ceiling. A reviewer quoted there describes maxed-out towers of every category other than lasers and grenades falling short at that stage, and the page's explanation is a scaling argument: adding cannons is linear growth, while a laser corridor or a grenade slow multiplies whatever is already firing. Levels before 3.2 accept a linear build; 3.2 does not, and no amount of cannon tiers closes the gap.

That is worth holding next to the DPS table. At 34.5 DPS the cannon is the highest-damage turret listed, and the FAQ page uses exactly that comparison to make the opposite point — the grenade launcher's much smaller detonation number buys a multiplier that the cannon's larger number cannot.

Where it is weaker than it looks

Two limits are readable straight off the table. Its 2 shots per second is the third-slowest rate in the game, behind only the mortar's 1.4 and the laser's 1.7, so a cannon that misses the line of travel has a long wait before it tries again. And its 350 range is well short of the laser's 550, which is why the corridor tricks documented on 6.1 are written around lasers rather than cannons.

What we have not confirmed

We do not have upgrade costs or a tier-by-tier scaling curve for the cannon — the upgrade grind page states plainly that no verifiable source publishes them, and we are not estimating. We also do not know what the "larger" fifth shot's damage or penetration values actually are; the stat sheet notes the behaviour without quantifying it. Neither post-launch patch logged on the update history page mentions the cannon, so unlike the laser it has no documented balance change since the sheet was taken.

Sources on this site

Stats and the penetration framing: all turrets. Placement rule and the power role: turret roles. In-game tooltip text and the missing cost data: upgrade grind. Why penetration needs a chokepoint to matter: orc flow mechanic. Player placements: 5.2, 4.2, all achievements. The scaling ceiling: 3.2. The DPS misreading: FAQ and myths. Term definitions: glossary.